


if you must be their anchor/then let me be your rock

by justjoy



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:05:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/justjoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos and Cecil have a late-night conversation in Cecil's flat, and maybe stumble upon some realisations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you must be their anchor/then let me be your rock

"This town, it's not - it isn't - "

Words fail Carlos as he looks out the window, Cecil's back a dark silhouette against the view of the lonely burg that Carlos has tentatively come to call home.

They are in Cecil's flat, with its familiar light coat of sandy dust that covers everything except some of bedroom furniture and the small coffee table that Carlos now sits at. Carlos had once offered to come over and clean the place up a bit, but Cecil merely shook his head with a rueful smile, and that had been it. Cecil spends so much time at the station that he rarely comes back, if ever; Carlos suspects that Cecil's probably spent more time here over these past months than he has in years, and that's mostly for the semblance of privacy that it affords them.

"Safe," Cecil says into the silence, and Carlos isn't surprised to hear that Cecil's just voiced what he hadn't found the words for - this is Cecil, after all, Cecil who can string words together better than anyone else Carlos knows, Cecil who can take them apart just as easily. "I know that. _You're_ not safe."

Now Cecil turns around, and Carlos doesn't need his - friend? partner? lover? - _Cecil's_ flair for words to know that this last part is what he is truly worried about. The emphasis is hardly easy to miss.

"Neither are you," Carlos answers finally, setting down the faintly phosphorescent not-quite-purple mug of tea he has not sipped for the last ten minutes. Like almost everything else here in Night Vale, the tea doesn't even pretend to be anything approaching normal - in fact, from what Cecil had told him, the blend could just _barely_ be called tea in the conventional sense - but Carlos has developed a strange liking for it ever since Cecil brewed him a mug on his first visit here.

Tonight, though, he just doesn't quite have the stomach for it.

"This town needs me." Cecil's tone makes it quite clear that this statement is not up for discussion, no more than any of the scientific facts Carlos deals with on a daily basis.

Carlos doesn't even feel inclined to question it. He thinks instead of endless nights spent trying to unravel the strange happenings of this town, countless hours listening to the only voice that made sense.

"So do I," Carlos says without quite meaning to, then turns away, unwilling to meet Cecil's unblinking gaze.

Cecil is sentimental in his own odd way beneath the layers of wit and sarcasm, though he'd - thankfully - gotten over waxing lyrical about Carlos a while back, at least while on air. But Carlos isn't used to being outwardly emotional like this, in spite of the rather undeniable fact that it is far from the strangest thing he's had to deal with lately.

Across the table, Cecil exhales, inhales, and lets out the next breath in something that Carlos can only describe as an odd cross between a huff of laughter and a sigh. "So where does that leave us?"

"Here. Together," Carlos' fool mouth answers glibly again without permission from his brain, and there's no mistaking Cecil's laughter this time.

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I write fic for a podcast now...?
> 
> ~~But really, this is probably the first and last WTNV fic I will ever write. I don't even know how this one happened.~~
> 
> ETA: Night Vale has officially taken over my life; see [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/931173) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941300) for proof.


End file.
